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The Mandarin Particle Dou:A Pre-Exhaustification Exhaustifier

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The Mandarin Particle Dou:A Pre-Exhaustification Exhaustifier EISS 11 1 The Mandarin Particle dou:A Pre-exhaustification Exhaustifier Yimei Xiang Abstract This paper provides a uniform semantics to capture various functions of Mandarin particle dou, including the quantifier-distributor use, FCI-licenser use, and scalar marker use. I argue that dou is a presuppositional exhaustifier that operates on sub-alternatives and has a pre-exhaustification effect. Keywords dou · Exhaustification · Quantification · Free choice · Scalar · Alternative Semantics Y. Xiang, Harvard University, http://scholar.harvard.edu/yxiang In Christopher Piñón (ed.), Empirical Issues in Syntax and Semantics 11, 00–00. Paris: Colloque01 de Syntaxe et Sémantique à Paris (CSSP). http://www.cssp.cnrs.fr/eiss11/ © 2016 Yimei Xiang / 1 Introduction The Mandarin particle dou has various uses. Descriptively speaking, it can be used as a universal quantifier-distributor,03 a free choice item (FCI)- licenser, a scalar marker,Draft and so on. First, in a basic declarative sentence, the particle dou, similar to En- glish all, is associated with a preceding/ nominal expression and univer- sally quantifies and distributes over the subparts of this expression, as ex- emplified in (1). Here and throughout the paper, I use a [square bracket] to mark the item associated with dou. (1) a. [Tamen] dou dao -le. they DOU arrive -ASP ‘They2016 all arrived.’ b. [Tamen] dou ba naxie wenti da dui -le. they DOU BA those question answer correct -ASP ‘They all correctly answered these questions.’ c. Tamen ba [naxie wenti] dou da dui -le. they BA those question DOU answer correct -ASP ‘They correctly answered all of these questions.’ 2 Y. Xiang Moreover, under the quantifier-distributor use, dou brings up three more semantic consequences in addition to universal quantification, namely a “maximality requirement”, a “distributivity requirement”, and a “plurality requirement”. The “maximality requirement” means that dou forces the predicate denoted by the remnant VP to predicate on the maximal ele- ment in the extension of the associated item (Xiang 2008). For instance, imagine that a large group of children, with one or two exceptions, went to the park. Then (2) can be judged as true only when dou is absent. (2) [Haizimen] (#dou) qu -le gongyuan. children DOU go -PERF park ‘The children (#all) went to the park.’ The “distributivity requirement” says that if a sentence admits both collec- tive and atomic/nonatomic distributive readings, applying dou over this sentence blocks the collective reading (Lin 1998). For instance, (3a) is infelicitous if John and Mary married each other, and (3b) is infelicitous if all the considered individuals only participated in one house-buying event. (3) a. [Yuehan he Mali] dou jiehun -le. John and Mary DOU get-married -ASP ‘John and Mary each got married.’ b. [Tamen] dou mai -le fangzi. they DOU buy -PERF house ‘They all bought houses.’ (# collective) The “plurality requirement” says that the item associated with dou must take a non-atomic interpretation. If the prejacent sentence of dou has no overt non-atomic term, dou needs to be associated with a covert non- atomic item. For example in (4), since the spelled-out part of prejacent sentence has no non-singular term, dou is associated with a covert term such as zhe-ji-ci ‘these times’. (4) Yuehan [(zhe-ji-ci)] dou qu de Beijing. John this-several-time DOU go DE Beijing ‘For all of these times, the place that John went to was Beijing.’ The Mandarin Particle dou: A Pre-exhaustification Exhaustifier 3 Second, as is well-known, dou can license a pre-verbal wh-item as a uni- versal FCI, as exemplified in (5). Moreover, I observe that dou in company with a possibility modal can license the universal FC use of a pre-verbal disjunction, as shown in (6). In particular, if the possibility modal keyi ‘can’ is dropped or replaced with a necessity modal bixu ‘must’, the use of dou makes the sentence ungrammatical. (5) a. [Shui] (dou) he -guo jiu. who DOU drink -EXP alcohol ‘Anyone/everyone has had alcohol.’ b. [Na-ge nanhai] *(dou) he -guo hejiu. which-CL boy DOU drink -EXP alcohol ‘Any/Every boy has had alcohol.’ (6) a. [Yuehan huozhe Mali] (dou) keyi jiao hanyu. John or Mary DOU can teach Chinese Without dou: ‘Either John or Mary can teach Chinese.’ With dou: ‘Both John and Mary can teach Chinese.’ b. [Yuehan huozhe Mali] (*dou) jiao hanyu. John or Mary DOU teach Chinese c. [Yuehan huozhe Mali] (*dou) bixu jiao hanyu. John or Mary DOU must teach Chinese Third, when associated with a scalar item, dou implies that the pre- jacent proposition ranks relatively high in the considered scale. When dou takes this use, its associated item can stay in-situ but must be focus- marked. Like in (7a), dou is associated with the numeral phrase wu dian ‘five o’clock’, and the alternatives are ranked in chronological order. (7) a. Dou [WUF -dian] -le. DOU five-o’clock -ASP ‘It is five o’clock.’ Being five o’clock is a bit late. b. Ta dou lai -guo zher [LIANGF -ci] -le. he DOU come -EXP here two-time -ASP. ‘He has been here twice.’ Being here twice is a lot. The [lian Foc dou ...] construction is a special case where dou functions as a scalar marker. A sentence taking a [lian Foc dou ...] construction has 4 Y. Xiang an ‘even’-like interpretation; it implicates that the prejacent proposition is less likely to be true than (most of) the contextually relevant alternatives. (8) (Lian) [duizhang]F dou chi dao -le. LIAN team-leader DOU late arrive -ASP ‘Even [the team leader]F arrived late.’ In particular, ‘one-CL-NP’ can be licensed as a minimizer at the focus po- sition of the [lian Foc dou NEG ...] construction, as shown in (9a). Notice that the post-dou negation is not always needed, as shown in (9b). (9) a. Yuehan (lian) [YIF -ge ren] *(dou) *(mei) qing. John LIAN one-CL person DOU NEG invite ‘John didn’t invite even one person.’ b. Yuehan (lian) [YIF -fen qian] *(dou) (mei) yao. John LIAN one-cent money DOU NEG request Without negation: ‘John doesn’t want any money.’ With negation: ‘Even if it is just one cent, John wants it.’ In case that a sentence has multiple items that are eligible to be asso- ciated with dou, the function of dou and the association relation can be disambiguated by stress. Compare, in (10a), the prejacent of dou has no stressed item, dou functions as a quantifier and is associated with the pre- ceding plural term tamen ‘they’; while in (10b) and (10c), dou functions as a scalar marker and is associated with the stressed item. (10) a. [Tamen] DOU/dou lai -guo liang-ci -le. they DOU/DOU come -EXP two-time -ASP ‘They ALL have been here twice.’ b. Tamen dou lai -guo [LIANGF -ci] -le. they DOU come -EXP two-time -ASP ‘They’ve been here twice.’ Being here twice is a lot. c. (Lian) [TAMEN]F dou lai -guo liang-ci -le. LIAN they DOU come -EXP two-time -ASP ‘Even THEY have been here twice.’ The goal of this paper is to provide a uniform semantics of dou to ac- count for its seemingly diverse functions. I propose that dou is a special ex- The Mandarin Particle dou: A Pre-exhaustification Exhaustifier 5 haustifier that operates on sub-alternatives and has a pre-exhaustification effect. The basic idea can be roughly described as follows. Assume that a dou-sentence is of the form “dou(x, P)” where x and P correspond to the associated item and the remnant VP, respectively. The basic meaning of dou(x, P) is P(x) and not only P(x 0), where x 0 can be a proper subpart of x, a weaker scale-mate of x, and so on. For example, “[A and B] dou came” means that A and B came, not only A came, and not only B came; “it’s dou [five] o’clock” means that it’s 5 o’clock, not just 4, not just 3, .... The rest of this paper is organized as follows. Section 2 will review two representative theories on the semantics of dou, namely the distributor approach (Lin 1998) and the maximality operator approach (Giannaki- dou & Cheng 2006; Xiang 2008). Section 3 will define dou as a special exhaustifier and compare it with the canonical exhaustifier only. Section 4 will discuss the universal quantifier use of dou. I will show that the so called “distributivity requirement” and “plurality requirement” are both illusions, and that the facts that usually thought to be related to these two requirements result from the additive presupposition of dou. Section 5 and 6 will be centered on the FCI-licenser use and the scalar marker use, respectively. 2 Previous studies There are numerous studies on the syntax and semantics of dou. Earlier approaches treat dou as an adverb with universal quantification power (Lee 1986; Cheng 1995; a.o.). Portner (2002) analyzes the scalar marker use of dou in a way similar to the inherent scalar semantics of the En- glish focus sensitive particle even. Hole (2004) treats dou as a universal quantifier over the domain of alternatives. This section will review two representative studies on the semantics of dou, one is the distributor ap- proach by Lin (1996), and the other is the maximality operator approach along the lines of Giannakidou & Cheng (2006) and Xiang (2008). 2.1 The distributor approach Lin (1996, 1998) provides the first extensive treatment of the semantics of dou. He proposes that dou is an overt counterpart of the generalized distributor D in the sense of Schwarzschild (1996).
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